Ring of Fire
by alternatives
Summary: Ben moves up in the corporation, sort of.


FF_1006862

RING OF FIRE

I hate luncheons. They always mean the end of a beautiful thing.

I met Angie after the China mess and she was really nice about listening to me talk about Zhu Bao Shi. She also cured me of my obsession with the Mandate of Heaven and I ditched my files on China, like the one on Meng Xuenong. You know who he was, right? Mayor of Beijing who let hundreds die in the SARS epidemic, and allowed unlicensed mining that disappeared a town in Shanxi when he was governor there.

Anyway, I was just thinking of asking her if we could do something besides go clubbing and take me to movies to help me speak Romanian better. That was fun. Sometimes we had seen the movies at home in English and the dubbing or subtitles made us laugh so hard that we got thrown out of the theaters for disturbing other patrons. Then she helped me with my mom.

Mom wanted advice on what to do with her money. She had it in SunTrust and first they got socked with the mortgage thing. We had just picked a nice local bank for her to move everything into when Angie found a red flag on them: they lost more money when Bank of China got caught laundering money – you know, the Zahavi case? Sometimes I wonder why Draco didn't think of the people that would get hurt by his dropping that dime on BoC. On the other hand, knowing him, I can hear it: "The rules about money laundering have been in place for almost a decade now. Any bank that didn't follow them deserves to go down." Draco is very big on honesty and straight dealing with both your employees and your customers. That's why most of his employees have been here forever. It's probably also one of the reasons Romania still has one of the healthier economies in Europe in spite of everything.

Angie was mentoring under Klara, Draco's business specialist, and she told me what to tell mom. Then she dropped the bomb; she said she looked around and thought, I have to take my training home to Ireland and help the Celtic Tiger with all this mess going on. So we gave her a sendoff.

On the way back to my lab I walked into my boss and his sister coming out of his office.

I know I said it would be totally unfair if Alexandra Draco looked like her brother Vlad. What's really unfair is that they do look alike. You would know them for brother and sister anywhere. Once you get over saying hey, they're related, you say what went wrong with him? She has the same widow's peak, the same piercing eyes, the same stern face. But her nose is less beaky, and her hair is dark auburn. She's gorgeous in a goddess-like, unapproachable way. And she wears the Order of the Dragon on a thick gold chain around her neck instead of the bracelet he wears to detect trace chemicals – and turn into a venomous snake if necessary.

Anyway, as soon as they saw me, Alexandra snapped her fingers and said, "Perfect." That meant trouble.

Knowing that, I sighed. "I think my passport is still valid. Do I need a visa?"

"Not for Greenland." Draco had a hint of a smile in his eyes. People tell me that never happens with his other employees. On the other hand, I don't feel like his pet puppy any more. I think I've graduated to trained ape.

On the other hand, they needed my childlike charm again. That was the upshot of the China deal: for everybody to underestimate me. I didn't know that at the time but it worked. Anyway things had been peaceful for a while and I was getting some good work done with some sensors that were part of a bioproject to breed microbes that would eat things like antibiotics and drugs. The idea was to put them in water treatment plants where stuff thrown into the water system – manually or otherwise – were helping cause transgender fish and other madness. Now I was going to have to let Artu take the credit for that. Artu is a nice guy and there's nobody I like going drinking with better, but I wanted both our names on the project report and Greenland would make that impossible unless I broke both Artu's arms and trashed the computer files. That's no way to keep straight with a boss like Draco.

"Are my clothes on the way there?" I asked. My clothes arrived in China before I did.

"Not yet."

"What should I pack?"

"I'll let Ilse take care of that."

I almost swallowed my tongue. No, she wasn't a sweet honey colored blonde like Ingrid Bergman, she was much paler and I got this image of her picking slain warriors off a bloody field, not charming Nazis and corrupt police officials. I don't know why I can't get used to the fact that Draco has a knack for finding mega-competent women who are also drop dead gorgeous. I introduced myself. Turns out Ilse is Klara's cousin. "Do I get a briefing?"

Alexandra handed me a DVD. "You can watch it on the plane," she said.

The DVD was two-sided. Ilse the earth scientist had put together four hours of background and update on Greenland, the ice sheet, and arctic shrinkage. We came in at Nuuk and then took a hopper to Ilulissat and by then I knew about the booming sounds that were not caused by breaking ice, and about the way too many icebergs in the fjord for mid-March. It's not that the fjord doesn't get ice-blocked. It's just that it was about twice as much ice as they were used to. Ten percent more is a bagatelle, thirty percent more is doable. One hundred percent more is a problem. Why Draco cared, I supposed I was going to find out.

Hotel Icefjord is perfect for glacier watchers. You can identify a favorite patch of the glacier, but don't get attached because it will move seaward an average of 30 meters a day. Our rooms were also open on the south to the equinox. The spring equinox, that was the point I made to myself as I unpacked. I couldn't get lucky enough to stay here until July; Draco would expect much faster results and so did I, if I wanted to get back to the lab before Artu finished the sensor. I went out for a look around, assuming Alexandra was still unpacking.

Around the corner somebody was smoking a cigarette. Yuck. Even in the open air flowing crisply off the glacier. Footsteps came toward the corner and the guy jumped when he saw me. I don't think it's illegal to smoke in Greenland, even outside, I think he just didn't expect anybody to be standing there. Blonde guy, Nordic looking. There had been Inuit working the airport but also a sprinkling of Norse. Anyway this guy said, "You with the greeners?"

Hello. Eco-peeps in Greenland. Booms like explosions. Lots of ice in the channel. They were here to stop the demolition of the Greenland ice sheet, knowing it would further lower the albedo of the arctic and increase melt. The polar bears were not only endangered but about to die out. Somebody was going to get hurt. That happens when you combine explosives and wild animals who feel threatened with green activists who feel ditto. I went inside to tell Alexandra.

She was standing in the lobby talking to a few young people in outdoor gear. "Earthquakes?" she said.

"Yeah, we think the booming is the ice sheet adjusting as the ground underneath shifts," said one of them, a willowy girl with an assertive American tone that sat oddly on her mild East Asian voice. I looked at Alexandra but she said only, "How interesting. I've never been in an earthquake before."

"Well, there was a doozy in Iceland about a year ago," the girl continued, "and I guess Greenland is due."

"Well, thanks. I guess we'll see you in the dining room, don't be strangers," Alexandra answered. The group moved out the door.

We sat down for some lunch and when we got rid of the server I said, "Do you believe her?"

"Why don't you?"

"One of the kitchen workers thought I was a greener."

"Well?" I told her my suspicions and Alexandra said, "The explosions are way out on the ice sheet. What would greeners expect to do about that?"

Busted. So I said, "How are they getting the explosives out there?" Alexandra just waited. Well, I knew they couldn't boat them in. "Flying them in…. From the other side of Greenland."

"Who?"

"Business."

"Why?"

OK, no business wants to choke its own shipping channels but if they're trying to drive a rival out of business… But flying explosives across Greenland? Live explosives, ready to go off on impact? "Somebody over here is helping them. They drop the bombs and somebody over here detonates them."

"And that girl lied to me about earthquakes," Alexandra finished. "Greenland has had a number of small earthquakes over the last few years, but she doesn't know anything about them."

I nodded; that had been in the DVD. "Why would greeners help set off explosives on the ice sheet? The melting is bad enough."

"Somebody is using those kids for ulterior purposes." Alexandra looked stone cold. That's when I really saw the resemblance to her brother. Lying was happening here and she was going to do something about it.

"Who?"

"I have an idea but I'll have to let the kids confirm it."

We finished, paid and left and somebody came running out of the elevator and thumped into me. I untangled myself. Boy was I sorry for that. Pat once took Carnie and me to a Beach Boys concert at Wolftrap. Here was the whole concert in one woman. From her California tan to her sun-bleached hair to missing her friends by more than half an hour. "Sorry," I said.

"No sweat. Did you see a bunch of kids going out earlier?"

"Yeah, we did. I'm Ben."

"I'm Rhonda." See what I mean?

"Uh, I think they're out of sight by now."

"Doesn't matter, I know where they went."

"What are you doing here on the edge of a glacier?" I asked.

"Saving polar bears," she said.

"Um, the polar bears live about three hundred miles northwest of here," I said.

She smiled. I was a dead man. "No," she said, "this is long term. We're restoring the environment."

I looked over at Alexandra who asked, "Can we help?"

"No, we have all the help we need," Rhonda answered. "See ya."

"I hope so." I waved. "That was too easy," I told Alexandra.

"She's a sweet trusting girl," answered Alexandra. "But she didn't give us the name."

"She doesn't know, maybe," I guessed.

"But I'll bet that other girl does. Follow her," Alexandra ordered.

I never got a better assignment. I caught up to Rhonda. "So who are your friends?"

Rhonda chuckled. "You fell for her," she accused.

"Who?"

"Tina. They all do. She looks like a tigress. Acts like one, too, sometimes. Anybody gets out of line, she claws them. When this started, there were fifteen of us. Now there's six left. The others got into fights with Tina and they left."

"So she's the boss?"

"No, she just took over."

"You ever fight with her?"

"No, when she gets rabid I just ignore her, go talk to somebody else and leave her flat. She's not the whole cause."

"Long term climate change?"

"The world is waking up to the truth. We just want to preserve the arctic environment long enough so it can recover."

Ice. Billions of tons of ice. Chipped off the ice sheet and dumped into the ocean. Then I remembered an article in a magazine from a few years ago and I wanted to say all kinds of things to Rhonda, but I kept my mouth shut. Alexandra would be pissed if I went off half-cocked to somebody who didn't have any control over what the group did. We had to get Tina isolated in the midst of her bunch, convince the rest of them, and make it obvious to her that she couldn't do anything on her own. We would try to make her back off first and if that didn't work, then we would play hard ball. "Hey, I have to go back. Would you tell your friends my boss and I want to buy you guys dinner?"

"Sure. See you!"

We were finishing dinner with coffee and cake when Alexandra put her cup down with a clink. "All right, kids, it's time to get down to brass tacks," she said. "You're being used."

"What do you mean?" asked Dan. He was sitting next to Tina and we had been talking across the table about dirt-biking.

"The ice. It's bogus. You're never going to save the polar bear that way."

"Well, what way would you suggest?" Tina said in her tigerest voice, with her arms folded across her chest.

"Stop what you're doing."

"Why in hell would we do that?"

"Two reasons," Alexandra purred back.

"First, blowing off pieces of the ice is also going to push ice into the melt conduits inside the sheet and block them. When that happens, the meltwater has to go somewhere. It finds little cracks to trickle through, and it forms a layer of water under the ice. That lifts the ice up. When the melt starts up again in the spring, it flows faster through that under-ice channel. Not to mention that the glaciers drop more icebergs. It makes the ice sheet self destruct in the long term.

"In the short term, there will be additional global warming. Because of what you're doing, not in spite of it."

Tina gave an as-if sort of huff. "We're going to cool the arctic down," she insisted.

"Tina, where is the ice going once you get it into the water?" Alexandra asked.

Tina looked around from under lowered lids. I wanted to snap my fingers. Tina knew more about this project than anybody in the group. Maybe the others – the ones who left – had figured this part out and quit when Tina wouldn't budge. That meant she was the one who controlled the explosions. Whoever was backing this had trusted her – or co-opted her. Whatever lies were going around here, she helped spread them. The backers gave her too much information for her to buy into the lies.

Queen bee, I thought. They gave her power. This is what's left of the group, and she's doing her best to maintain the clique, but Rhonda doesn't fit and Rhonda doesn't care. Rhonda is her main challenge, and Rhonda is too laid back to let Tina drag her into fights. Rhonda is the one the others cling to, to reassure them they aren't just drones in the hive. Rhonda leaves, and all the rest follow. But Rhonda won't leave because she believes in saving the polar bears. I looked at her; she had seen the rock on the other side of her from the hard place. I relaxed. This was not some fluffy greener. She had brains.

"Tina?" asked Carter, who sat next to Alexandra. He was starting to get a betrayed look on his face. Good. Another fulcrum.

"It goes into the West Greenland Current and travels north," Tina fiercely answered as if explaining to an idiot. "Then it freezes to the ice pack."

"Not true," Alexandra snapped.

"All right, what's your answer?" Tina snapped back.

"The West Greenland Current can't carry anything north right now, it's blocked from the winter refreeze. Your ice isn't going anywhere until the summer thaw. And even then, the West Greenland Current only runs north for about three hundred miles," Alexandra explained. "After that it turns south again and empties into the Gulf Stream."

"Wait a minute," said Rhonda, "the Gulf Stream is what keeps the Orkneys and arctic Norway warm." I felt proud. I didn't have to tell her, like I did with Alexandra. She knew. Now.

The other four kids were staring at her. "But that means…" Mary began.

"It gets cold. The cabbage palms in the Orkneys die. The English Riviera closes," Alexandra finished for her. "The Norway coast cools off. They'll need more heat to survive. Right now, there's no alternative; that means more oil. More global warming."

"So what. People wasting their money on tourism," Tina sneered. "I'm talking about saving the polar bears."

"Which you can do only if the ice stays at the north end of the current," Alexandra ripped back. "And it won't."

There was a pause and the kids were looking at Tina as if wanting her to say something, anything, to get back at us. I decided the time had come for a little unauthorized info from me. "Look, Tina used earthquakes as an excuse for the booming sounds and we all know that was a lie. But what you people are doing increases glacier quakes. I have records on them that go back fifteen years. The number has doubled starting in oh-five. Your explosions are imitating those quakes. The more explosions, the worse you make things. That's why you really don't want to finish this job.

"What's more, as the glaciers lighten up, the pressure on the rock decreases. Greenland has some of the oldest rock in the world, but it's not invulnerable. Release the pressure, and it snaps back, and you've got an earthquake.

"Now, you kids think we're just tourists but we're not. This is a business trip for us. My boss heard from a shipper about why he couldn't meet his schedule, and we're here to find out why the fjord is blocked with ice for the foreseeable future.

"But that doesn't mean we're multinational corporate villains. I had to leave behind a project that means cleaner water for everybody in the world. My boss only takes on projects that will turn a profit. That means my project will go to completion and people everywhere will benefit. And he never throws more chemicals at a problem. My job is to remove chemicals naturally, with microbes. So I'm on your side just about as much as you are.

"I'm the one who figured out the results of what you're doing. Whoever got you kids involved in this, is going to profit from people having to burn more oil. I'm guessing it's a Norwegian oil company pumping from offshore rigs and polluting the Lofoten fishing beds. No more bacalao for your tapas, kids." They were looking at me now, their mouths a little open. Booya, I thought. They not only don't believe Tina any more, they believe us more than they ever believed her. Tina was slumped in her seat. "What's your next move?" I asked.

"Tina, there's supposed to be another drop tomorrow," Carter said. "What are we going to do?"

Alexandra lowered her voice. "Tina, what happens to you if they drop the explosives and nothing happens?"

It took about five minutes of silence, then Alexandra and I got up and left the dining room with five nice bows on the tail of our kite. Tina kept sitting there. I would have felt sorry for her, but an ordinary person would have looked bleak right then. She just looked mad.

I got up at oh-dark-hundred the next morning to keep Tina from sneaking out of the hotel with the control for the explosives. I was only two minutes ahead of her. When she saw me she frowned. "Just what do you think you're doing?" she challenged.

"Exactly what you think I'm doing," I said. "I'm on guard duty. There's going to be no explosion today, Tina. Give me the box."

"Up yours," she answered.

"All right, don't give me the box, but if you think you can sneak out of here, you've got another think coming." Alexandra came downstairs just then. Tina's stubborn look got even more stubborn.

"You can keep the box," Alexandra told her. "But you're going nowhere without escort."

"That's false imprisonment," Tina charged.

"Not unless we keep you from going where you want," Alexandra told her. "You can go anywhere, even to the bathroom. But somebody is always going to know exactly where you are and be right there with you."

"They always want me to call in after I see the drop," Tina countered. Damn. Good strategy.

"No problem."

So about noon we all got on snowmobiles and trailed Tina out to this plateau about thirty miles north of Ilulissat, turned our engines off and waited. A couple of hours later the sun glinted off something high in the sky further north. Alexandra got out field glasses. "Helicopter. The drop?" she asked Tina.

"Yes." It was the first thing Tina had said since dawn.

"Hands out of your pockets," Alexandra snapped. "Dan, Carter, hold them."

"Battery," Tina accused.

"You never held hands with these guys before?" Carter and Dan eyed each other. Alexandra had caught on to one more game Tina had been playing with the clique.

We waited another forty-five minutes. "Take your jacket off," Alexandra told Tina. "Stand up. Turn around. All the way around." The jeans were so tight they couldn't hide anything, not even a half moon. "I'm cold," Alexandra said. "Can I wear your jacket for a while?" Dan handed it to her. It didn't take her long to find the remote.

"Here," said Rhonda, "let me." She took the thing and she and Alexandra walked off with it, turning it over and examining it. Rhonda took something out of her pocket, I think it was a nail clipper – one of those combo things that also has a file. They could use the point of the file to unscrew the remote case and rip out the wiring. Failing that, they could throw it over to smash on the rocks below the cliff.

Then I heard this growl behind me and Tina streaked past me heading for the cliff edge. The only thing at the cliff edge was Rhonda and Alexandra standing there with the remote they were pulling apart to unwire. Tina almost pushed me onto my butt, luckily only almost. I had a split second to catch up to her and I almost made that. In the meantime I had time for a decision and I made it good. I reached forward, grabbed Rhonda and Alexandra by their pants and pulled and we fell backwards into a heap. The edge of the cliff crumbled under Tina's feet and I only had two hands, both occupied. The kids behind us ran forward to look over.

She lay on the rocks below, the remote beside her and a pool of blood around her head, which lay at a funny angle from her shoulders. Everybody took a breath and some people started crying. I thought, I'll probably cry later. For now, that's one problem child gone and what would Draco have done to me if I let Alexandra die?

And then there was a roar in the distant north, out on the ice. The ground did shake. We all fell flat. The cliff started to crumble and we crawled away from the edge as fast as we could go, then got up in a calm spell and ran for the mobiles. Tina had managed to push the button on the way down.

The path had heaved about so we couldn't go full speed or we'd dump over rocks and clots of dirt. Suddenly Alexandra stopped her bike and we did too. We could hear smaller rumbles in the opposite direction from the explosion. "That's the town!" Alexandra said.

I hate this part of the story. The hills nearest to Ilulissat had slid. The outer houses were broken or buried. We joined the rescue efforts. Alexandra said not a word for a couple of days. Rhonda had red eyes when she wasn't crying. Dan kept waking up at night screaming. When it changed from a rescue effort to a recovery effort, we were in really bad shape. About then the police told us thanks for the help and we'll take it from here.

Alexandra and I took the hopper back to Nuuk and then she booked Air Greenland for Norway, working her laptop for all she was worth on the way. She bullied her way into the Stavanco Oil Building in Trondheim and left me in the reception room while the befuddled secretary let her into the boss's office. The secretary went to get me some coffee and snacks and I sneaked closer to the door. That's how I heard when the screaming started. Alexandra banged her way out; behind her a guy lay on the carpet yelling about venom and pleading for his secretary to get something to catch it in.

On the way back we heard about the earthquake northeast of Greenland right on the joint between the Mid-Atlantic and Eurasian plates.

In my office I checked three things. One was project status, which was yellow. Artu got the flu and nobody else could take over since I was out of town. That was OK. Another was that Stavanco was on the verge of bankruptcy after its president had a mental meltdown. That was pretty good.

Draco walked into the lab. "I understand you acquitted yourself very well in Greenland," he said.

"Thanks. It was a team effort. Alexandra set 'em up and I knocked 'em down."

"Or not." He paused. "My sister is very precious to me. She is all that is left of my family, after our older brother died. If it weren't for you, I would be alone in the world."

"Yeah, well, you gotta do something about that, boss. Either get out there and find that perfect woman, or ease up on the specifications. After all, it could be you next time, and I might not be there to save you."

"I wouldn't bet on that if I were you," said Vlad Draco. I think he left then but I can't be sure. My computer played "Beautiful Lie" at me and sure enough, I had mail.

"Hi, hope you're back in one piece. I'm sorry about Tina but on the other hand, it could just as easily have been us buried in that landslide as her dead on the rocks. If you think that's cold, well, get over it."

"Hi Rhonda U R just in time. I have a project to finish but I might be able to get some vacation then. Haven't been to CA. Where?"

Oh yeah, venom? Well, the guy wasn't dead. Still isn't. So Alexandra didn't bite him. But somehow she convinced him that venom was dripping on his head, the way Loki was punished for killing Baldr. You know, Loki the Liar? Father of the World Serpent? Causes earthquakes when he squirms under the venom? That Loki.

7


End file.
